


Personal Jesus

by kosmickway (KMDWriterGrl)



Category: Profiler
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1416793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KMDWriterGrl/pseuds/kosmickway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Jack's first visits to Sam when she's still at Quantico working his case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Jesus

Jack stared in the mirror and grinned in satisfaction. A completely different face looked back at him. 

He was getting better with the latex and hair pieces, better at blending foundation and blush to make the skin tone look natural. This face was nearly perfect in its imperfections. Anyone looking at him would never know there was another set of features under this one, a mouth with perfect teeth and an aquiline nose and eyes that were dangerously green. Anyone looking at him now would see a nondescript man, blah in every way, completely unmemorable and wholly unrecognizable.

It was good to disappear sometimes. 

He pulled on a pair of white scrubs, white shoes, and a lab coat. From his trunk full of props and tools and tricks came a stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer. The printer on his desk spat out a laminated plastic ID badge. Jack clipped it to a lanyard that read “Richmond Memorial Hospital.”

A few more touches here and there– some more shadow under the eyes to make it look as though he were an overworked nurse with one too many night-shifts and a few too little hours of sleep. He combed his hair, dyed a soft and unobtrusive bark brown, and parted it sloppily, again keeping to appearances of an over-worked nurse. 

Picking up the keys to his rented green Volvo, he made sure his false credentials were tucked in his brand new wallet and several pairs of latex gloves were folded in his lab coat. 

Finally he lifted a bouquet of bright red roses from the vase by the door and headed for the car, singing softly under his breath. 

***

Bailey Malone broke the speed limit getting to Richmond from Quantico. It wasn’t a long trip– three hours in the best traffic conditions– but he still laid into the accelerator, changing lanes often, incurring the wrath of other drivers and the occasional middle fingered salute. 

He could turn on the siren if he wanted to but, he admitted to himself, that was overkill. Even Tom, nervous and sweating in the front seat, couldn’t justify the siren. 

“She’ll be fine,” Bailey said, smiling over at his friend. 

Tom glared at Bailey in response. “I told you I shouldn’t have come. Not today. I should have stayed home and worked on my book like I told you I was going to. But no, you had to drag me in to consult on this thing and that thing and–“ He broke off and checked his watch. “Do you think she’s okay?”

“Angel’s with her. She’d call if something was wrong.”

“Yes, but do you think she’s okay?”

Bailey shot an amused glance at Tom. “Sam is fine. Trust me.”

“But it’s almost a month too soon.”

“It’s not uncommon for first babies to come either a little early or a little late.”

Tom glanced at the speedometer. They were pushing 80. 

“Can’t you go any faster?”

“It usually takes hours, Tom. You’ll get there in plenty of time.”

“You know how she worries–“ Tom fretted. “She’s probably upset that I’m not there.”

“I know how you worry, Tom. Sam is the cool and collected one in this relationship, not you.” 

Bailey switched on his turn signal and cut across two lanes of traffic to zoom down the exit ramp for I-295. “I’ve done this twice now, and trust me, sometimes it’s just better that you aren’t in the room. It can get a little intense.”

Tom yanked off his tie and fed it through his tense fingers, twisting and yanking at the silk in agitation. “But I told her I’d be there.”

“And you will be.” Bailey sped down the exit that would take them into downtown Richmond and barely paused at the red light at the end of the ramp. “Look, the hospital’s right there.”

Tom was pulling off his seat belt even before Bailey had angled the car to the main entrance. He opened the door and leapt out. “I’m going inside. Can you–?”

“I’ll find you,” Bailey said. “Give her my love, Tom.”

Tom barreled inside and Bailey could see him jabbing at the elevator button before the main doors slid closed. Bailey chuckled– he understood first father jitters all too well– and turned the car into a visitor’s slot but sat for a minute with the ignition running. 

Hard to believe that straight-laced and serious Sam, his student, his protege, and now his colleague in the Behavioral Science Unit had fallen for bright, funny, nervous Tom Waters. He never expected the pair to last. 

Sam was dedicated to her work, lost in it day and night, her mind forever split between two planes– the here and now and the mind of the criminal deviant. She never seemed to want to surface from her work long enough to tend to the mundanities of every day life. It wasn’t that she forgot to do the things that needed to be done in her preoccupation– she wasn’t prone to letting dinner burn or the bathtub overflow because she was busy thinking. But she always wore a look of vague distraction on her face and her eyes appeared slightly cloudy, as if she were seeing into a different dimensional plane. 

Sam saw things in levels that only Bailey and a few other people could really understand. She was truly gifted in that respect. 

Tom, on the other hand, was just the opposite. 

Nowhere near as intense or as serious, Tom was the person everyone turned to for a joke or a witty retort when things got too tense around the office. Just as brilliant as Sam but nowhere near as conventional, focused but not as deeply driven, he worked the hours required and left the Bureau behind at the end of the day. 

A criminal lawyer-turned-victim’s rights activist who had taken up a consulting position with Behavioral Science, Tom was, Bailey liked to say, the conscience of the unit, reminding them with a few elegant phrases who it was they were fighting for each day– the victims and their families. He was the man everyone turned to when they needed to be reminded of their humanity. 

Bailey had introduced them at a dinner party, had watched them spar and debate about everything under the sun. He watched Sam leave the party in a huff when Tom finally succeeded in getting under her skin and saw the dopey grin of a man who had been clocked by a heavy object spread across Tom’s face as he watched her go. 

He’d listened to Sam’s tirade about Tom the next day and encouraged her to give him another chance– then watched her turn scarlet with embarrassed delight when Tom showed up outside her office with two dozen red roses. 

For two months he watched the unlikely romance take root and then take wing. He spent a year advising them-- both in their work and in their personal lives. He had been one of Tom’s groomsmen at their wedding a year and a half ago. Today he would become godfather to their first child.

All the while he had never admitted to anyone that Tom wasn’t the only one in love with Sam.

He tried to forget it, to push those feelings aside. Sam was a lot of things to Bailey– student, colleague, friend, practically family. She read all of his papers before he sent them for publication, carefully editing, asking him questions and praising his points. 

They stayed late in his office some nights, mulling over cases files full of hell and damnation. During her final year at the Academy when she routinely gave herself migraines from stress, he made her lie down on his couch for an hour with a cool washcloth on her forehead, his fingers itching to stroke her hair. 

No, Sam was many things to him but a lover wasn’t one of them. There had been rumors, of course, whispers behind hands and closed doors. Sam was top of her class because she was sleeping with Agent Malone, they whispered. They stayed late in his office ‘to work’ and had hot, sweaty sex on top of his desk. 

That one had made Bailey laugh aloud. No one had ever had hot, sweaty sex with him on his desk, not even his ex-wife. Nor, he added to himself, was that desk ever likely to see hot sex during his tenure. Some people used sex to relieve the constant tension and stress of the unit but Bailey wasn’t one of them. The images of guns, blood, bullets, and grey matter behind his eyes wouldn’t allow it. 

His favorite rumor had been the one that placed him and Sam in the gun-cleaning room off of the firing range after hours. Bailey had entertained a long and drawn-out fantasy about the two of them in that small room when he’d come home that night, horny as hell and unable to do anything about it. He’d taken a long hot shower and thought about it, about Sam’s lovely blonde curls and her curvy body, thought about her until the water turned cold and he came, hot and sticky, into his own hand. Sam. 

Sternly he jerked his thoughts back to the present. Sam was Tom’s wife, he reminded himself, and currently inside a delivery room in Richmond Memorial Hospital in the throes of hard labor. Tom was a nervous wreck and probably irritating her more than he was helping her. Thank God for Angel.

He’d go get flowers, he decided, her favorite type, and give them to her when it was all over. She’d be too tired to talk then, worn out and ready to sleep. He wouldn’t have to exchange more than a few words with her. A few words were all he could manage after the direction his thoughts had taken. 

An image came rushing at him– Sam in a short skirt, sitting on the side of his desk, her blouse unbuttoned to a provocatively low angle, her legs parted just enough ... 

He rubbed at his eyes, hoping to erase the teasing image from the back of his retinas. Sam wasn’t his. Sam was Tom’s. Just Tom’s. 

Flowers. Go find a florist and buy some flowers. Nice ones. Tied with a bow. And a card. Something sweet but not overly sentimental. Flowers. Roses. Red ones. White ones. Pink ones– yes, pink. A good compromise. Red was romantic and white was innocent. Pink was somewhere in between, perfect for Sam and her new baby, perfect for his goddaughter. 

Bailey jammed the car into gear and headed up the street, looking for a florist. 

***

Jack found the hospital’s security disappointingly lax. It had been no problem at all to slip in through a service entrance in the cafeteria and walk out with all the doctors and nurses and P.T.s at the end of their lunch break, all of them walking like zombies and deeply distracted. 

He had almost been hoping for a challenge, something to make him work for the pleasure of seeing Samantha.

Instead he had slipped upstairs to the maternity floor, clutching the bouquet of red roses, unquestioned and unnoticed. He was just another hospital drone in clean scrubs, making his rounds, maybe taking time off his shift to visit a sick friend. It was laughably easy. 

He walked down the hall and into the waiting room on the fifth floor. There were a few people waiting, watching TV, drinking sodas or coffee, keyed up, restless, wondering what was going on through the closed doors just down the hall. 

Those doors opened and a pretty woman with cocoa skin and bright eyes walked out. She was wearing a hospital smock over her jeans and sneakers, her hair pulled up in a ponytail. 

Angel. The best friend. The artist. Samantha’s closest gal pal. If she was coming into the waiting room, that meant someone else was sitting with Samantha. The husband must have arrived from Quantico, then. 

He watched her with slightly narrowed eyes. The best friend was very little concern of his. He knew of her because she was close to Samantha but she was of no real interest. She brought nothing to the table, no enticing tidbits about Samantha. He’d been watching the pair of them long enough to know that Angel was a bulldog, a fierce protector of Samantha’s secrets. She offered nothing valuable to him, nothing he couldn’t get on his own with the help of his own set of toys. She was dispensable. 

The elevator dinged and he looked over in time to catch Malone exiting with a bouquet of candy- pink roses and baby’s breath.

Bailey Malone. Jack bared his teeth and tried to suppress a growl. The self-righteous FBI profiler, the man who thought he could climb inside the head of genius and swim around, absorbing all there was to know. The man Samantha revered, both academically and personally, the master to her pupil. The man who was so far beneath her that he couldn’t believe Samantha considered him an equal. 

Malone’s very existence made his molars ache, his temples throb. He made acid bubble in Jack’s gut. He was an annoyance who never went away, a fly that buzzed consistently in his ears. Samantha’s dark horse; the noble teacher who was desperately in love with her; the man, Jack feared, who might eventually put two and two together and see that the answer wasn’t just four but four and so much more. His fingers tightened around the stems of the roses. Nothing would bring him more pleasure than to tighten a rope around Bailey Malone’s neck and watch him struggle to breathe. 

Malone and the best friend were talking in low voices, smiling, nodding. Malone reached out for Angel and pulled her into a friendly hug, then removed a stalk of baby’s breath from the bouquet and tucked it in her hair. Angel laughed and gestured toward the double doors. They walked back together and out of Jack’s sight. 

***  
“How’s she doing?” Bailey asked Angel as they walked. He held the roses carefully upright, not wanting petals to fall. He adjusted the folder he held tucked under his arm. 

“Oh, you know Sam. She’s getting through it. Tom’s making her crazy, though, the way he’s pacing around the room. She’ll probably send him out soon if he keeps this up.” Angel laughed and rolled her eyes. “I swear, I wonder sometimes how those two manage to live in the same house without starting a nuclear war.”

“They tend to cancel out each other’s worst habits. Tom isn’t nearly so jumpy about things when she’s there to steady him. And he keeps her head in the real world as opposed to always having it half in and half out of some criminal’s back alley.”

They stopped outside of another set of double doors. Bailey hesitated, then said, “Why don’t you see if it’s okay if I can come in. She might not want me here.”

“Don’t be silly,” Angel said. “She’ll be glad to see you.” She lowered her voice. “And would probably be even more glad if she knew you were going to take Tom downstairs for a cup of coffee ... or possibly a sedative.”

Bailey grinned. “I’ll do what I can.”

Angel walked in to the room and Bailey, after a pause, followed her. 

Sam was sitting up in bed, blankets over her legs, cuffs and monitors hooked around her wrists and arms. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a loose bun. Her face was shiny with sweat but that only made her look, in Bailey’s opinion, more beautiful. 

Tom was pacing, the collar of his button-down shirt open. He looked ready to explode from tension and nervousness. His hair was mussed, as if he’d been raking his hands through it.

“Look who I found in the hall,” Angel said, crossing to Sam and handing her a cup of ice. “Here you go. Chew it slowly.”

“Bailey!” Sam looked surprised but pleased to see him. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Do you honestly think I’d let Tom drive up here from Quantico all by himself? 64 would be nothing but one giant wreck if I let him behind the wheel of a car right now.” He leaned down to kiss Sam on the forehead and presented her with the roses. 

“You remembered!” she said with a smile, taking them in her arms. 

“It’s easy to remember your favorite flower, Sam,” he teased. “It’s the only thing about you that’s predictable.” He put the file folder on the table next to her bed. “Against my better judgment, I brought this. Though I wish you’d concentrate on something a little more pleasant.”

She reached out and fingered the folder. “Thank you, Bail. I just need something to keep my mind off of this.”

He took the roses from her and placed them in a vase sitting on the sink. “There. You can focus on these if the pain gets too bad.”

“It’s not too bad yet,” she said. Her eyes strayed to Tom, who was twisting his tie in his hands again and she exchanged a quick, pleading look with Bailey. “I keep trying to tell him I’m fine but he won’t listen.”

“Hey, I am a sensitive man of the times,” Tom said. “I fully understand and appreciate what you’re going through, Sam, and I want to be here with you every step of the way.” 

“I don’t think it’s entirely possible for you to fully understand, Tom,” Angel said sweetly. “But it’s nice of you to try.”

Sam shut her eyes and gripped the blanket as a contraction came on. Tom dove for her hand. “Is it bad? Do you want me to get a nurse? Do you want some drugs?”

Bailey smiled and took Tom’s arm. “Relax, Tom, it’s still early. Drugs and nurses come later. Just let her ride it out as best she can. She’ll need your hand later on.” He tugged gently on his friend’s arm. “Come on, let’s go downstairs and get you a soda.”

“I don’t need–“

“No, I know you don’t,” Bailey interrupted. “But Sam needs a minute or two. Let’s give her some time to get herself together.”

Sam released the breath she’d been holding and loosened her hand on the blanket. She looked up at her worried husband and said calmly, “Tom, I’m fine. I would just like a minute or two by myself, okay?”

“If you’re sure,” Tom said hesitantly. 

“I’m sure.” She smiled around at them. “I’m really okay. Just give me some time.”

Tom leaned down to kiss her. “I’ll be right downstairs, baby. I’ve got my phone on.”

Angel squeezed Sam’s hand and steered Tom out the door. “We’ll meet you downstairs, Bail.”

“Right behind you,” he answered. 

The door swung shut. He was alone with Sam. 

“I’ll distract him for a while,” he assured her. “How long do you want?”

“Even ten minutes is enough. He’s just so–“ She searched for a word. “Fretful. He acts like I’m the first woman ever to give birth.”

Bailey chuckled. “He knows you’re not. But you’re his wife and it’s your first time going through it. Any man has a right to be nervous.”

“Well, he’s making me nervous,” Sam confided. “I’m okay with this but he acts like I’m about to shatter into tiny pieces.”

“Between Angel and I we can distract him for half an hour, tops. Then I’m afraid you’ll just have to put up with his fussing.” He laughed at the pained look on Sam’s face. “I’ll tell him to cool it, okay?”

“You’re an angel,” she said. “Thanks.” 

“I’ll leave you alone,” Bailey said, patting her hand as he got up to leave. He resisted the urge to tell her that he, too, had his phone on his hip. She was smart enough to know it and calm enough to call if she needed them. 

Sam’s blue eyes clouded as a contraction swept over her and she fought to keep her breathing steady. He stifled the urge to take her hand or to smooth her hair. Instead he stepped toward the door, knowing she hated to have him see her like this. 

“Ten minutes or so, Bailey,” she said through gritted teeth. “Please.”

“I’ll make it happen.” 

He turned to look at her from the doorway. “Sam.” Her eyes caught his and he felt a spark jump between them. “Breathe.” 

As he left he heard her taking a deep, shaky breath. 

***

Jack watched Malone exit Samantha’s room and head down the hallway. He fought the urge to slam the man’s head into the wall. Instead he continued down the hall, holding his bouquet of red roses. 

He stopped at Samantha’s room and peered inside through the window. There she was, her blonde hair lifted off of her neck but for a few tendrils that escaped and stuck to the sides of her neck. She was leaning on the pillows, her eyes closed. 

Even unnaturally swollen with child, she was beautiful. Ethereal. A goddess. 

Jack pushed the door open and stood there, watching her for a moment. 

“Tom, I really want to be alone–“ Samantha said, opening her eyes. “Oh! I’m sorry, I thought you were my husband.”

“I don’t mean to bother you,” Jack said softly, his eyes running over her, taking in all the details. Still gorgeous, even with the thing inside of her. “I just wanted to give these to you.” He held out the roses. 

She smiled and her whole face transformed. “They’re beautiful. But who sent them?”

He had an answer for that but it took him a moment to find it. “The nurse at the nurse’s station sent them back. She said to tell you they’re from your mother.”

“My mother?” Samantha frowned. “My mother died when I was nine.”

Dammit. He’d forgotten. He had been staring, enraptured, and forgotten. “Mother-in-law, then. I’m sorry. I should have paid closer attention.”

“No, it’s all right. Thank you for bringing them.” She looked around the room then said, “I’m afraid I don’t have a vase for them, though.”

“I can just move these–“ Jack said, starting to lift the pink roses out of their vase and place the red ones in it. 

“No, please don’t. I love the pink roses. They make me smile to look at them.”

They did, did they? Because they were from Malone, no doubt, her great protector. He felt a snarl twisting his lips and didn’t know if he could hide it from her. He had to leave, quickly. 

“I’ll just go find a vase then,” Jack said, his back turned to her. “Back in a flash.”

When he returned a few moments later with a vase pilfered from a neighboring room, it was to find her pale and sweating, breathing heavily, just coming down the other side of a contraction. 

Samantha was in pain. It wouldn’t do. It wasn’t right. 

“Would you like me to call a doctor? Get some pain medicine for you?”

He started toward her side ... and stopped cold when he saw the file folder open on her bed. 

It was a plain manilla folder, but the seal for the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was stamped on the front along with the word “Copy” in large red letters. There were papers inside, pictures, time lines, and in large hand-written letters across the tab was “Jack of All Trades.”

She was reading his case file. Right now. He was in her head. She was thinking about him as he was standing right in front of her. It was extraordinary. 

He found his voice. 

“Must be a pretty good case if you brought it to the hospital with you.” 

“It’s the only thing that keeps me really interested,” she said. “This guy is an enigma ... he’s something I can’t even begin to wrap my head around. But it doesn’t stop me from trying.”

Her fingers scrabbled on the blanket and she groaned softly. Jack stepped forward, concern for Samantha warring with fury at the husband for having done this to her. He started to put a hand on hers, started to offer some help.

The door opened, admitting Malone, the best friend, and the husband. 

Jack back-pedaled and turned to the sink, fiddling with the flowers, listening to the conversation. 

“Sam, honey, are you okay?” came the anxious voice of the husband. 

“They’re just coming a little faster is all,” was her reply. “I’m okay.”

“Do you want some– What are you doing with this?”

Jack sneaked a peek in the mirror and saw that the husband had his hands on the case file– his case file– and was holding it up as if it were something disgusting. 

“Sam, what is this doing here?”

“I asked Bailey to bring it. I wanted it–“

“To read? Now? When you’re giving birth to our first child?” The husband’s voice rose. “How could you want to read this– this– depravity now? God, Sam, can’t you give it a rest?”

“It’s an interesting case,” Samantha replied, defensively. “It keeps me occupied. It lets me think.”

“Honey, you’re in labor. You don’t need to think. You need to breathe and you need to relax and when it’s all said and done you need to have this baby. What you don’t need is to look at this lunatic’s file!”

“I told you, it takes my mind off of the pain,” Samantha said. “I needed something to distract me.”

“Sam, you have lived every minute of your life for the last 12 months with this guy and his victims! Must he be with us every minute of the day, including in the delivery room? My god, Sam, this is too much, even for you.”

A blood-red haze filled Jack’s vision. How dare he speak that way to Samantha? How could he? Oh, this was too much.

“Tom, I–“ Her voice stopped mid-word and Jack heard her pull in a sharp breath. “Oh, god. This one’s strong. I can really feel this one.” She started to gasp, trying to get enough air to ease past the pain. 

“Do you want me to get your doctor, Sam?” he heard Malone ask. 

“Go, Bailey,” the husband said and Malone left the room at a run.“It’s all right, baby, I’m here, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Just breathe, honey, come on, nice, deep breath.”

Jack backed toward the door, his eyes on Sam and the crowd around her bed. At any minute a doctor would come in, possibly requesting his help, and Jack wasn’t prepared to do that, not now. Not when he had so much else to think about. 

He turned and slid out the still-swinging door, Sam’s face still imprinted on his brain even as he walked down the hall, staring at the white wall in front of him. 

***

Bailey left the room after he got Sam’s doctor, to give her the privacy she was entitled to. Tom and Angel would take care of her now. He’d be in the way, making it hard for her to concentrate, awkward, even, considering that she was his former pupil and he her former teacher. 

He sat in the waiting room instead and perused the Jack case file. Tom demanded that he take it out of the room and, despite Sam’s protests, he had. He sat with it now, mulling over it, working the half-formed profile in his mind. 

Six victims so far. Maybe more. None killed the same way. No connection that they could see. Clever. The monster was so damned smart. Creative. Subtle in a way. It irked him. 

He wanted to get this guy, wanted it badly. He was obsessed with the case– but not nearly as obsessed as Sam. She had thrown herself into the case for the last year, worked late hours trying to predict his next move, looking for a pattern to the kills where none seemed to exist. Bailey knew that it bothered her highly logical mind that she could find no rhyme or reason to the Jack of All Trades killings. He also knew she was determined to find one, somehow, come hell or high water. 

She hadn’t even slowed with her pregnancy, working just as hard and just as long through morning sickness and backaches. It had reached a point where Bailey was forcing her to go home at a decent hour and, when Tom wasn’t around, made sure that she was eating every meal. Finally, three weeks ago, Tom and Bailey had strong-armed her into taking maternity leave. 

An hour later, Angel appeared in the waiting room, grinning, flushed and happy, tears drying on her cheeks. 

Bailey leapt to his feet. “Do I have a god-daughter?”

“Her name is Chloe Elizabeth Waters,” Angel replied. “Five pounds, four ounces. She’s gorgeous.”

Laughing aloud, Bailey pulled Angel to him for a hug. “How’s Sam? Is she okay?”

“Oh, she was a pro. Only threatened to break Tom’s hand once.” Angel wiped her eyes. “She was struggling to keep her eyes open when I left.”

“I imagine so. Giving birth is hard work.”

Angel sank into a chair next to him. “I’m tired, too, and I was just a spectator.” She held up a hand that was trembling slightly. “Look at this! I’m shaking!”

“Adrenaline. It’s awe-inspiring, isn’t it?”

Angel nodded. “Terrifying, too. I know I don’t want to go through it.”

“You’d be a great mother, Angel.” Bailey touched her hand. “Really terrific.”

“Mmm. Well, I’ve got a god-daughter to dote on now and that’s enough for me.” She leaned her head back against the wall and peered at him. “You hit a home run with those pink roses, Bail. She was staring at them the whole time she was pushing.”

“I brought Janet bright orange tiger lilies when she was delivering Arianna. She told me later the color helped her focus.” He thought wistfully of his ex-wife for a moment, now living in Baltimore. “She was a trooper, Angel. Fourteen hours of labor. She held my hand so tight she cracked one of the bones. Cursed a blue streak at me, swore she’d never let me touch her again. But she still looked beautiful when it was all over and she was holding Ari in her arms.”

“Do you miss her?” Angel asked softly. 

“I miss the way we used to be. But it’s been three years since the separation and there’s no way she’s coming back. She called last week, said she wanted to make it final.” Bailey rolled his neck. “Most people lose their families to this job, Angel. They don’t mean for it to happen but it does. It’s just too hard on a marriage for one of you to only be half present, to always have your mind on the person whose life you may save by catching a monster.”

“You don’t think that would happen to Tom and Sam, do you? I mean, she’s already so preoccupied with this Jack case. She even asked you to bring the file here! Of all places!”

Bailey shook his head. “I shouldn’t have brought that file. It was stupid. Tom’s right– her focus shouldn’t have been on him. It was almost as bad as having him right there in the room.” 

***

Tom met them in the waiting room half an hour later, beaming. Bailey reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two wrapped cigars. 

“And since I know you don’t indulge, Angel, this is for you.” He handed her a bar of rich dark chocolate. “To celebrate.”

They all walked outside to a small courtyard and stood, breathing in the warm summer air. Twilight was closing in.

Bailey and Tom lit up and Angel started on her chocolate. For a while, none of them spoke. 

“So when can we see Sam and Chloe?” Bailey asked. 

“Probably in an hour or so,” Tom said. “The nurses were still cleaning both of them up when I left.”

“You’ll be a great father, Tom. Certainly better than I’ve been to my kids. You take all the time off you need.”

“About that, Bailey. We’ve already discussed cutting my hours at Quantico so that I can be with Chloe. I don’t mind that. I want that. But Sam’s talking about going back in three weeks.”

 

“Three weeks!” Angel exclaimed. “Is that all she’s taking off?”

“That’s what she told me,” Tom said, frustrated. “She wants to keep going with this case and I don’t think she should be focusing on that right now, you know?”

“I agree it’s not a good idea,” Bailey said, “but I don’t–“

He paused when the door opened and a nurse with untidy brown hair, who looked slightly rumpled, came out into the courtyard and lit a cigarette.

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” Bailey continued, tapping an ash. 

“Advise her to take some time off,” Tom said. “Force her, if necessary. She’s a new mother, Bail, she needs to be bonding with her child, not handing her off to me after three weeks so she can pursue some lunatic.”

“Tom, if you can’t convince her, what makes you think I can?” Bailey asked. 

“She trusts you. Implicitly. You’ve been her friend for years. She’d go to the moon if you asked her to.”

“Oh, I doubt–“

“You know it’s true,” Tom said intensely. “Look, Bailey, I’m not expecting you to work a miracle here. But I would really appreciate it if you’d talk to her. I want her working less.” He took a deep breath. “And if she won’t work less, I at least want her off the Jack of All Trades case.”

***

Off his case? The husband wanted Samantha taken off his case? 

Jack snorted under his breath, then remembered where he was and applied his attention to his cigarette. 

The husband was really overstepping. First he knocked up Samantha like a bitch in heat. Then he snapped at her when she was in pain and was off celebrating with Malone and the best friend as she lay tired and bleeding on the fifth floor. Now he wanted her off his case and devoting more time to the thing he’d placed in her, the thing she’d given birth to. 

Chloe. An old-fashioned name. The husband’s choice, no doubt. A squalling little bundle, red face and tiny hands and feet. Terribly annoying. Deeply demanding.

No. It wouldn’t do. It simply wouldn’t work. 

The husband had dangerous ideas. He was under the illusion that there were many things under his control when, in fact, there was nothing he could control, not even his wife 

The child was too much work, too time-consuming. It would take all of Samantha’s time and energy and strength. 

Something had to change. 

Someone had to go. 

He put out his cigarette and went inside again, leaving behind Samantha’s three devoted followers. 

Jack took the stairs two at a time to the fifth floor. 

Standing outside the cold glass window of the nursery, he stared in at Samantha’s child, sleeping curled in a blanket. He pressed his fingers to the glass and sang, very softly. 

“Hush little baby, don’t make a sound.   
Jack’s gonna put daddy under the ground.”

Then he kissed the glass and whispered, “One day she’ll kill you for me.”

Finis.


End file.
